Storm damages historic causeway but farmers still await 'miraculous recovery'

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

Wild weather across South Australia has damaged coastal infrastructure but farmers will need far more rain in coming months if the state's current grain crop is to secure a "miraculous recovery", a leading grower says.
A cold front pushed across South Australia on Wednesday, causing a storm surge and bringing strong winds and rain over agricultural areas.
The front was part of a more protracted burst of wild weather that has kept emergency services busy this week.
The weather has damaged powerlines and brought down trees, including at Williamstown, where a 70-year-old man had to be cut free from a ute on Tuesday.
In the past three days, rainfall totals have exceeded 30 millimetres on Eyre and Yorke peninsulas and in the Mid North, 40mm on Kangaroo Island and 80mm in the Adelaide Hills.
But the Riverland and Murraylands received far less — with the Bureau of Meteorology recording totals of only a few millimetres in the former, and just over 10mm in the latter.
Along the Fleurieu Peninsula, the stone causeway leading to the heritage-listed Second Valley jetty received significant damage on Wednesday.
"It's now got a hole through the middle of it so people can't get out to the jetty itself," Yankalilla Mayor Darryl Houston told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"The jetty stood up well but the causeway is now badly damaged and being fenced off so people can't access it."
It is not the first time the causeway has been impacted by storms — Mr Houston said it had been "slightly damaged" earlier this winter, and a similar hole appeared in 2023.
Several South Australian jetties have been destroyed by storms this winter, and Mr Houston said repairing the Second Valley causeway would be a "quite a big job".
"The Department of Transport were out there last week looking at it and are on it already but now there's been further damage," he said.
"Because it's heritage-listed, of course, with the stonework — that's another complication. Only certainly people can work on it."
Jetties and roads have been closed along parts of Eyre Peninsula, and the Far West Aboriginal Sporting Complex was surrounded by saltwater as huge tides rolled in.
"At Port Lincoln wharf we got up to about 2.4 metres at high tide," the Bureau of Meterology's Christie Johnson said.
"The normal highest sort of tide we would get without the storm surge is about two metres, so we got 40 centimetres above that."
The road leading to the Smoky Bay boat ramp has been cut off, and water has inundated local oyster sheds.
"Last night I was made aware there was some trouble down at Smoky Bay down at the oyster leases in their sheds," Ceduna Mayor Ken Maynard said.
"It flooded and caused a concern with electricity."
While the rain may have been music to the ears of some of the state's farmers, Grain Producers SA chair John Gladigau said the patchy falls were "widespread but not huge in quantity".
Mr Gladigau said subsoils were mostly dry, and that the strong winds that had accompanied the rain had been "devastating to emerging crops".
"In the Mallee, my farm only had three millimetres of rain to the 28th of May, for the year, and then had 18 millimetres for June and literally as that crop was emerging got the horrible dust storms of two-to-three weeks ago.
"A week followed and it re-emerged again and then got hit a second time this week."
Mr Gladigau said some farmers were already having conversations about whether to treat the current season as a write-off.
"If we had above-average rainfall for the next three-to-four months — and I'm talking significantly above — there's a chance, a very slight chance of getting average crops in some places," he said.
Earlier this year, the state government announced drought relief funding for $55 million would flow to communities in desperate need of support.
The funding came on top of $18 million announced in November.
SA Dairyfarmers' Association president Robert Brokenshire said that the arrival of winter had not led to an end of the dry spell, and that farmers were now contending with a "green drought" in which accessing fodder would be a big challenge.
"The feed won't grow when it's this cold, even though it's wet," he said.
"We need our grain growers as well because we buy a lot of grain off of them and also we buy a lot of hay off of them.
"I'm just not sure where the fodder supplies are going to come from, and that's unprecedented."